41

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is and isn't proof

« on: November 20, 2017, 06:28:04 PM »

I think I sort of understand what Tom's saying. Remember: according to his rules of perspective (which are not mathematically defined) the sun visually reaches the horizon when it's 'sunset distance' away from the us laterally. Never mind how; it just does.

By the same rules, an observer on the sun would also see us on the horizon.

Here's where the magic happens:

In Tom's model, the horizon is considered a true perspective vanishing point: the ground and all lines parallel to it meet at that point. So if the observer on the sun were to switch the sun off and shine a laser pointer in our direction, parallel to the ground, it could hit us because we are on the horizon. And to us it would appear to come from the horizon because it's parallel to the ground, and again, all lines parallel to the ground converge to the horizon.

The big obvious flaw is that it's impossible to draw a single side-on diagram representing what Tom claims is happening in the real world, because it hinges on a kind of gentleman's agreement between two points of view. Obviously, if an observer on the sun 3000 miles in the air really did shine a laser pointer parallel to the flat ground, that laser beam would, by the definition of 'parallel', stay 3000 miles above the ground forever, and never reach our eyes standing far below. But if we avoid asking 'what would happen' and ask instead 'what would the observer on the sun see?' (Tom's answer: the beam converge perfectly with the horizon), it suddenly seems possible for that beam to hit us in the eyes.

Hence the aversion to abstract theories or use of trigonometry: those are tools for modelling what actually happens rather than dealing purely with what we imagine we would think we saw.

As I dealt with above, however, Tom's claims about what we would 'think we saw' are provably incorrect. His model requires parallel lines viewed in perspective to intersect over a finite distance. The thought experiment with the many sets of parallel train tracks proves that this cannot and does not happen, removing even the possibility that we would 'think we saw' his flat earth model working.

I think that's some sort of a reasonable analysis of what Tom seems to think.

But it all hinges on this idea that something is broken in fundamental geometric precepts like the law of similar triangles...which really can't be wrong because Euclid's proof of them depends on things as fundamental as ruler and compass constructions.

Personally - I don't think we even need to think about eyes and cameras and perspective at all.   We don't have to ask how the sunset LOOKS to the human eye.  We can ask "Do we feel the warmth on our faces from direct sunlight at sunset?" - or "How would a sphere look if it were illuminated by the sun at sunset?"  In these kinds of thought-experiment (or actual experiment) - you can't invoke "perspective" anymore...you MUST talk about the paths the photons take.

Tom won't address that question...we've pushed him closer and closer to the answer.   Today we have:

* The photons leave the sun at 90 degrees to zenith...which I think means "horizontally".
* The photons arrive at your eye horizontally.



But also...

* Photons travel in straight lines.

Which doesn't really work.

42

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Using airline flight data.

« on: November 20, 2017, 06:05:59 PM »

Personally - I say this debate is won...the Flat Earthers no longer have a leg to stand on, and they should have the guts to admit it.

While I do appreciate your argument, I’m not sure that it is the airtight argument you claim. It rests on one more assumption, which is that speed = distance * time is a good representation for the speeds, distances, and times at hand. For a plane, the ‘time’ variable is flight time and the ‘speed’ variable is average aircraft speed, so the ‘distance’ variable is the path length of the flight. You have made the assumption that flights travel in straight lines along their path. You must make this assumption in order to construct your mathematical proof, as your proof rests on an analogy between the sides of a quadrilateral and the paths of flights.

The important thing to remember here is that these flight times are only there to back up distances we can measure by other means.  So, for example, I can use things like Google Maps to calculate those same distances - and the results (over these very long distance routes) agree to within a few percent.

There are certainly cases where they DISAGREE - but when you look into them, they are things like routes that would cross hostile countries or places where there is open warfare.  In those cases, the airline routes are clearly longer - and you can understand why.

Airlines are AGGRESSIVELY price conscious because a difference of just $10 in an airfare between you and your competitors is life or death.  Since 40% of the price of an airline ticket is the cost of the fuel - if there was a shorter route or the plane could fly at a more efficient speed - they'd be doing it for 100% sure.   So a conspiracy to fly longer routes is ridiculous.

Instead of finding the “honest to goodness” distances between cities, I believe you have found upper bounds on the distances between cities. These cities can be separated by at most the distances you claim, assuming that flights travel in straight lines, or minimum distance paths. However, flight paths can always be devised that are longer than this minimum. Flights could circle cities for hours in order to extend flight time.

You may ask, “Why would airlines do this? This would be horribly inefficient and waste passengers’ and crews’ time.” I agree. However, this no longer constitutes an elegant mathematical proof free of assumptions, which is the reason I believe this thread is interesting.

Indeed - but if they were doing that - why would they ever be late in arriving?   If they had time to spare to orbit at the end of a flight - they'd never be late "due to unexpected headwinds", etc.

But the bottom line is that what we have here is a way to dismiss the crazy long routes that every FE map MUST produce as a consequence of flattening a spherical map.   The 3x longer route between Sydney Australia and Santiago Chile in the unipolar map and the even longer routes transpacific routes in the bipolar map are easily enough to dismiss any SPECIFIC map that the FE'ers can come up with.

The idea here is to find an argument that proves that NO POSSIBLE FE map can work.

One easy explanation that FE’ers might use is that the “Aether Wind” is blowing aircraft more significantly in the northern hemisphere, so when planes fly between these cities, they follow a nearly circular path between them, extending your expected distances by a factor of pi/2, or about 157%. Southern hemisphere flights, on the other hand, are less affected by the wind when in the southern hemisphere, and so have flight paths that are much closer to straight lines. This gets us half way to your 300% correction. The other half can be explained by the “Aether Wind” also causing altitude fluctuations of the plane in the northern hemisphere. These altitude fluctuations could cause planes to fly upward and downward sinusoidally, which would in fact not require a large amplitude to get the remaining correction that you have stated. This is just one of many examples of how planes could fly other than in straight lines that would allow for the flight times we observe on daily flights.

That idea - along with the "jet stream" argument fail because we can look at flight times on both the outgoing and homecoming flights on the exact same route and they only differ by a small percentage.   If these mysterious currents were capable of tripling an airplanes' speed in one direction, the return trip would never reach it's destination!

While I’m not trying to encourage FE’ers, I’m still curious to see an airtight mathematical proof, and I am not convinced that this qualifies.

Sadly, even airtight mathematical proofs ("How to photons get from the sun to the eye at sunset") don't convince the crazier FE'ers.   One of them is now reduced to claiming that mathematics don't apply to the real world in a desperate effort to weasel out of the "sunset trap" into which he's wandered!

43

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New here. How do you explain this?

« on: November 20, 2017, 02:01:32 PM »

In all truth, NASA only receives about 0.5% of the federal budget. While that is still a large amount, the VA gets roughly 1.2% of the budget. The DoD gets roughly 13% of the budget.

Not to mention some of the things that came from NASA research.

Burden of proof has yet to be established that they just "pocket" billions of dollars. Thus, it remains a conspiracy theory that holds little merit.

It's also worth mentioning that the $20 billion that NASA gets isn't all used in space research.  NASA stands for "National Aeronautics and Space Administration" and the "aeronautics" part includes things like research into aircraft safety, novel aircraft designs, work on improved fuel efficiency...that kind of thing.  NASA owns a bunch of wind-tunnels - one of which is (I believe) the largest in existence.

Also, it is very obvious to anyone who lives near one of their launch sites that they do in fact launch HUGE rockets on a fairly regular basis.   Even if you believe that those are not reaching orbit (or whatever you really believe) - they still cost a lot of money to build and launch.

NASA's payments to outside contractors is whatever it is...the number of staff they employ is clearly what they claim it is...PLUS the staff who are faking all of these videos.

Consider things like the James Webb Space telescope - even if it's not a 'real space telescope' - they still paid a shit-load of money to have those huge mirrors ground - and they definitely build all of the mechanism to unfold them - and the money for a rocket large enough to convince their neighbors that they really are going to launch it.

With all of those expenses, it's REALLY hard to see how they can be "pocketing" very much of it.

Also - who are the "they" who are doing the pocketing?   Employees of NASA?  They seem to be paid the standard rate for engineers, etc.   The management?

I just don't see how this insanely complicated process of faking everything could possibly turn a profit at all!

44

Flat Earth Community / Re: Anyone for a public discussion?

« on: November 20, 2017, 01:48:30 PM »

Astronomy is based on observed patterns. Observed patterns of the moon, observed patterns of the stars. Things are only predictable because they come in patterns. It is possible to create an equation to express those patterns, but they are only valuable in that they might produce a right answer.

read the literature i linked more carefully.  here are the equations of motion:



this is pretty much exactly how eclipse tables are calculated.  the nasa page you always link says this itself at the bottom.

The problem is a good deal more subtle than that.  We know what the equations are - but we cannot solve them for more than two bodies.   So we can say (for two bodies) - here are there masses, here is where they are in space - here is an equation into which you can plug any future time and the equation will tell you the location of the two bodies.   THAT can be solved.

However, for three or more bodies - no such equation is possible (it can actually be proven to be impossible).   Hence you cannot write an equation to tell you PRECISELY when the next eclipse will happen because the sun, moon and earth constitute a three body system.

BUT this doesn't mean that we use "patterns" to figure it out.   We simply don't use a single equation - we can do one of two things:

1) We can calculate the Earth/Moon orbits precisely as a "two-body problem" - then we can calculate how "EarthMoon" orbits the Sun as a two-body problem.  The solution isn't exact - but it's good enough to predict eclipses to within a fraction of a second over a century.   If we continually correct the data after the time of each eclipse is measured - then the results will be essentially perfect.

2) We can use "numerical integration".  So we calculate the two-body solution above over a time-step of (say) 1 second.   Over such a tiny time interval, the error will be about the diameter of an atom.  Definitely too small to matter.   Then we take the new positions and do it again over 1 second...we repeat this (using a computer) over a hundred billion seconds - and we arrive at a series of eclipse predictions over the next 3,100 years.   Then, we change the time step from 1 second to (say) a half second - and repeat the calculations.   The result is a new series of predictions.   If the difference between the first set of predictions and the second is "close enough" then we can be happy to say that this approach isn't introducing large errors.

In practice, it's worse than this because Jupiter and Saturn add significantly to the motion - but by breaking the problem down into separate 2-body steps, and integrating over tiny time intervals - we can produce answers as accurately as you'd like.   With modern computers, we can narrow down the answers to the point where we're talking distances the size of an atom and times down to nanoseconds.

So just because there is no single equation - we can still predict eclipses without using the idea of seeing "patterns"...which in itself isn't ever going to produce a perfect result because the effects of the gravity of the very slow moving outer planets means that the pattern of eclipses isn't ever "perfect" and has never precisely repeated over all of human history.

45

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How can the sun be a spot light?

« on: November 20, 2017, 01:29:59 PM »

So unless it's some crazy spotlight, that has no sides and still manages to point down, without being seen from the lateral AND YET still lights the moon from a lateral spotlight, in monthly lunar cycles.....
.......................surely the zetetic philosophy of examining ALL possibilities to find the truth must swerve towards the the RE sun/moon combo?

If not then another PLAUSIBLE option must be offered.

Then of course we still have THIS problem with the bipolar map...when it's midnight in Africa and daytime in the USA and China - er...how exactly does that spotlight thing work again?

Hmmmm its almost as if the spotlight sun is another nail in the coffin for the flat earth theory, although that coffin is more nails than wood by now.......

So the sun can't rise or set on flat earth nor provide the day/night patterns we experience.

And all Tom has to defend this with is some utter tripe about perspective lines and a serious misunderstanding about what the word parallel means. Even the J-mans posts are starting to be more credible that TBs lately....

The "spotlight sun" idea works somewhat bearably in the unipolar map.  It's not perfect - and the shape of the spotlight isn't a nice circle - and the shape has to change with the seasons.

But according to Mr Bishop, the unipolar map was proven incorrect in 1911 and has been entirely superseded by the bipolar map.    This is odd because it implies that the TFES Wiki is over 100 years out of date!   So I suspect that many (most?) FE'ers didn't go along with that change.

The trouble is that much of what made FET work was BECAUSE of the old unipolar map.   Evidently, when this bipolar map was adopted, and over the intervening 100 years - nobody ever stopped to re-think things like the flashlight sun idea - or even to reconsider the path the sun and moon would have to take across the Earth.   In the unipolar map, it makes some kind of  a weird double-spiral pattern - but on the bipolar map, it has to teleport from one side to the other or to be in two places at once...it's very weird and quite implausible.

As usual, FE'ers only have the ability to think one step ahead and not to consider the further consequences.

46

Flat Earth Theory / Re: I am doing a report on The Flat Earth Movement. I have few opinionated questions

« on: November 20, 2017, 01:22:01 PM »

Two quick remarks:

1. How does twilight work? Twilight occurs when the sun sets below the horizon and a pink afterglow appears on the clouds. This is hard to conceptualize on a Flat Earth model.

This is one of the biggest flaws of FE theory - it simply cannot explain any of several effects seen at sunset.  Consider the fact that the undersides of clouds are illuminated by the sun for several minutes AFTER the sun has completely vanished - and ask yourself how this is possible if the world is flat and the sun is 3,000 miles ABOVE the ground (and maybe 2,999 miles above the clouds) at all times.

2. Why does the Moon appear bigger when it is closer to the horizon? As of the Globe model, I believe this is explained by concave refraction in the atmosphere that creates an orangeish and magnified view of the Moon.

No - the reason people THINK that the moon is bigger on the horizon (and the sun too - but to a lesser degree) is because of a simple optical illusion.  Take a penny - hold it out at arms length next to the moon when it's high in the sky...do it again when the moon is on the horizon.  You'll immediately understand that the size of the moon doesn't change in the slightest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion

HOWEVER:  If FET were true, the moon would be about half the size at sunset than at zenith because it's roughly 3,000 miles overhead at zenith and about 7,000 miles away when it's setting.

47

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Satellites

« on: November 20, 2017, 01:11:02 PM »

I'm not the one that flooded the thread with the biggest joke pictures in the world.

All you need is a pair of cheap binoculars - I'm sure you could borrow a pair if you don't own them - check that website for the dates and times when ISS will be overhead - and look with your own eyes.   The ISS usually crosses the sky over a period of 3 to 5 minutes in the early evening, when you look in the right direction at the right time, it's unmistakable because it's moving faster than anything else in the sky.

You can easily make out the "H" shape of the solar panels and confirm that there is not a balloon half the size of the moon attached to it.

If you're going to claim something as outrageous as this - and you're not prepared to go out and simply look at the sky on the right evening - then your random guesswork and opinions are worth precisely nothing.  Why devalue your own intellect to this degree?   Do you really WANT people to think you're stupid...because that's how it's looking right now.

It's like someone claiming that all cows are purple with pink and blue spots - and then refusing to believe a photo of a cow that someone shows them - and absolutely refusing to go out and look into a nearby field where black and white cows are clearly standing.  Someone who did that could be justifiably called "stupid".  This is EXACTLY what you're doing.

All FE'ers should go look at the ISS through binoculars one evening and ask themselves how something so profoundly un-aerodynamic could be possibly be moving at the speed it clearly moves.

Or maybe you just don't want to see it?   Like my granddaughter sticking her fingers into her ears and singing "La-la-la-la-laaa...not listening" when we tell her it's bedtime.

48

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Bedford Levels experiment

« on: November 20, 2017, 12:55:22 PM »

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment

Why is it that the FEW doesn’t refer to Alfred Russel Wallace who repeated the experiment and demonstrated that the Earth is round, and that Rowbotham’s method was flawed.

It was a wager for a year's pay and both men walked away from the experiment claiming that they had won.

So why isn’t it discussed in the Wiki ?

Because you haven't written the article yet?

But mere mortals can't edit the Wiki - so someone with appropriate privileges would have to change it.   Whoever those people are, they are extremely unresponsive.   I've tried to get the SIMPLEST change (to correct the spelling of Eratosthenes - to correct the photograph of an iceberg that's claimed to be a picture of the ice wall - to resolve some contradictions it has internally) and nobody paid any attention to any of those requests.   It doesn't seem likely that anyone is going to accept large scale corrections to misstated history about the Bedford levels experiement.

49

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is and isn't proof

« on: November 20, 2017, 12:50:44 PM »

Who writes ' The sun will see the observer at its horizon, at 90 degrees, and that is where it will send its light. Its light is not being cast downwards'?  Complete rubbish.

At sunset when the sun is at your eye level horizon, are you looking upwards or forwards? You are looking forwards, right? That is the reasoning for why the sun is casting its light forwards to reach the target from its perspective.

Under the traditional model, if the sun sent its light forward, it would totally miss the observer, but that model has not been demonstrated to reflect reality, and is contradictory to the fact that we are not looking upwards when the sun is at the horizon.

If you refer to my diagram - you'll note that we are simply talking about how the light (or warmth) from the sun arrives at the man's head.   It doesn't matter whether his eyes are open or closed - looking up or down.   Indeed, we could reduce the problem to placing a white plaster sphere in place of the man with an second observer looking at the sphere and asking which half of it is in light and which half in shadow.   If the sun were truly in the direction of the horizon (as it is in RET) then the line between light and dark would be vertical at sunset.   But in FET, the sun is 3000 miles above the ground and the sun's rays are descending at an angle close to 30 degrees - so the line between light and dark would be at an angle of 30 degrees to the vertical.

What we're discussing here has NOTHING to do with human vision or vanishing points or perspective...it's merely a question of how the photons get from here to there.

So we're left with this new and interesting quote:

Under the traditional model, if the sun sent its light forward, it would totally miss the observer,

...which (for a flat earth) we do actually agree on...for a round earth, the "traditional model" works just fine.

So you're now in the realms of denying basic geometry in order to get FET to work...right?

Can we be crystal clear on this - you are now denying that basic geometry works...right?

In your world, photons travel in a straight line, horizontally from the sun (because light travels in straight lines) - but none the less crosses the horizon and arrive at the observers' face horizontally.

In your view, in my diagram, the pink line is a straight line...correct? 

I want to be REALLY clear on this.   This is a statement of your beliefs....right?

50

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is and isn't proof

« on: November 19, 2017, 09:41:53 PM »

I have addressed your diagram on numerous occasions. The sun will see the observer at its horizon, at 90 degrees, and that is where it will send its light. Its light is not being cast downwards. The target is forwards -- just as during sunset when we see the sun forwards.

No - what I've just quoted above is a nonsense paragraph.

"The sun will see the observer at it's horizon"...if the Earth is flat and the sun is 3000 miles up - it doesn't HAVE a horizon.  It's rays could reach every part of the Earth were it not for your "flashlight" effect.

"...and that is where it will send it's light."...the sun isn't a sentient being...how does it know where to "send it's light"?!?

"Its light is not being cast downwards."...of course it does!  When it's sunrise for me - it's noon for someone else - and the sun must be shining light downwards.

"The target is forwards -- just as during sunset when we see the sun forwards." - where is "Forwards" for a ball that's 3,000 miles above the surface?  Do you mean "horizontally"?

These sentences may mean something to you - but honestly they read like random babble to me.

Let's break down that post you've copied from a previous thread:

The physics in your scene are entirely wrong. You are using a model in which it is impossible for a horizon to exist. It is impossible for railroad tracks to touch a horizon in that model. Railroad tracks touch the horizon at a finite distance away, not an infinite distance away.

We're not talking about infinite distances or railroad tracks...we're asking WHERE DO THE PHOTONS ACTUALLY TRAVEL TO GET FROM THE SUN TO MY EYE.   Where is that photon from one moment to the next?  (If we imagine a discrete universe) or What is the path travelled by the photon?  (If we imagine a continuous universe).

That is a mind-numbingly simple question...so why won't you answer it?

Just tell us...do they follow the blue line or the pink line or some other line?

The path the photons travel is STRAIGHT.

OK - then it's the blue line - that's a straight line from where the sun is physically located to my eye - we lay out a virtual straight-edged ruler from the sun to my eye and that's where the photons go...that is the blue line - and it obviously completely misses the tree at the horizon.  If the tree is 6 miles away - then the light ray crosses it at an altitude of 3 miles and cannot be BLOCKED by the tree.  So if everything works the way you claim - then there can be no sunrises or sunsets.   

But clearly there ARE sunrises and sunsets - so there must be something wrong with your idea of where the sun physically is and/or your idea of the shape of the Earth.  Hence the earth is not flat.   QED.

But then you say:

The observer sees the sun at the horizon and, from the sun's perspective, the sun sees the observer at its horizon. Therefore the photons leave at a 90 degree angle from zenith and arrive at a 90 degree angle from zenith.

So you don't tell me the complete path of the light here - just how it starts out (horizontally) and how it ends up (horizontally) - but you carefully avoid saying where it goes between the start and finish.

If they leave the sun "horizontally" (which I think is what you're saying here) - then the photons will travel along at the same altitude above the earth and never reach the ground.   They can't arrive at my eye horizontally or they'd have to travel on curved path or take a 3,000 mile dog-leg someplace.

So then you give us this diagram:



In the top half, we have a man who is clearly about 3,000 miles tall looking at a sun that is burning a damned great hole in the ground about 6,000 miles away.

This is CLEARLY not a diagram about the real path of actual photons in the situation we're describing - it's like a photograph taken of the scene from the point of view of the man - drawn sideways and with a very weird scale...I have no clue what this is telling us.

The bottom half of the diagram - where (for some weird reason) you've tilted the Earth to the right - isn't correct either.   In the real world geometry, the sun's rays make a steeper angle to the ground than the rays of light from the top leaves of the tree.   So this diagram represents some kind of "wishful thinking" on your part.  But also, the sun's rays aren't leaving the sun at 90 degrees to it's zenith (you mean "horizontally" - right?)...clearly the rays are sloping downwards...which contradicts what you just told us in words.

Also, suppose we wait a minute or two until the sun is halfway below the horizon and the rays of light are passing by the base of the tree instead of through the leaves?  How does your diagram look then?

At sunset we see the sun at 90 degrees and the sun also sees us at 90 degrees. A laser pointer held by the observer or by the sun would be pointed at 90 degrees to hit the target.

Yes - this is what should happen - and in RET (where the ground curves downwards and the sun is 93 million miles away) - that's exactly what would happen.  But with your Flat Earth hypothesis, that can't happen - the sun is still 3,000 miles above the ground and a horizontal ray will just stay at the same height above the ground and passes over my head at an altitude of 3,000 miles...so that doesn't work.

The model you have provided is untested over long distances, makes several assumptions about perspective and infinity which have not been proven, and are contradictory to empirical reality. Your model of an infinite-distant and impossible-to-reach horizon is entirely theoretical and based on an ancient concept of a continuous universe. There is nothing to say that your model would hold up in reality.

Well, light travels in straight lines - over all distances - right?   My diagram makes no reference whatever to either perspective of infinities.   All of the numbers are nice simple, finite values - and we're not talking about images being formed or anything complicated like that - just about where the photons physically travel to reach my eyeball.

You just told us that they leave the sun travelling horizontally - and arrive at my eyes travelling horizontally - but you fail to explain how the ray descends through 3,000 miles while travelling horizontally and in a straight line.

This is where your ideas fail.

Our experience is that the distance to the horizon is finite, that the perspective lines intersect a finite distance away. Rail road tracks travel a finite distance before meeting the horizon -- not an infinite distance as predicted by your model. Your Flat Earth model must follow reality; not make a series questionable assumptions about the nature of reality and perspective which have never been observed.

We disagree about that - but I'm not talking about pictures of things - so perspective is simply not relevant.   I'm just asking how the suns rays can travel in a straight line from 3,000 miles up - past a tree at zero altitude and into my eye at zero altitude without curving or taking a dog-leg.

This is NOT a difficult question - and if you believe in FET - you need to come up with an answer or we've conclusively proven that the flat earth cannot exist.

51

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: How to prevent most site registration emails from going to spam

« on: November 19, 2017, 08:57:39 PM »

On my both my blog site and my home business site - I count the number of people who go through the account creation dialog but don't verify within a week of the system emailing them.   There are always a few of those just because people try to use a fake email address to register with - but if the numbers take a sudden uptick, you know to go and look for a reason.

In one case, my Web provider changed my site's IPv6 address - and the new one was one they'd recycled from an evil spammer who'd been using their servers - so my site was instantly on a bunch of blacklists.   I had to talk to my service provider and ask them to give me a non-blacklisted IP...and as soon as they did that, everything was good again.

But if you don't track the numbers, you can get blacklisted without ever realizing it.

52

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What is and isn't proof

« on: November 19, 2017, 08:39:55 PM »

Tom, YOU are the one who wants perspective to do something different to the sun and moon than it does for everything else in human experience.  That means YOU have to show that it does.

If you can show us where we can see the hidden pockets of infinity in the perspective lines I will be willing to concede that it is a concept rooted in human experience.

The argument doesn't depend on any infinities - the diagram uses simple finite numbers.  I could make a scale model of it very easily.

What is wrong with this diagram?   It simply shows where the photons MUST be travelling.  We agree that they go in a straight line.  We agree that there are sunsets.   But if we agree that there are sunsets and that light travels in straight lines - then the only thing wrong with this diagram is that it shows the earth as being flat and the sun being within a few thousand miles away instead of a few million.

The diagram doesn't assume a continuous or discrete universe - it just shows where the photons travel.

Why won't you address this?   Are you scared to?   Does it destroy your world-view?   It damned well should.

As it is right now, when we see the perspective lines touch you tell us that it is an illusion and quote some math for us. Your argument isn't really based on "human experience".

Sure it is!   There is the sun - it's behind that tree that's on the horizon.   This is only the case because the world isn't flat.

“Look at them, they appear to rise and set, the same size as when they’re at zenith, therefore it happens” is not proof.

Actually, it is proof that it happens.

Indeed it is Tom.  There are sunsets and sunrises (and moonsets and moonrises and Vega-sets and Vega-rises).   But if light travels in straight lines - then the world simply cannot be flat with the sun at finite distance.

Perspective really has nothing to do with it - that's something YOU brought up in a desperate effort to fix your broken cosmology.

You can't fix it...you just can't.

You assume we should be so very concerned with coming up with the math necessary to make that happen. You think we should strive to come up with hypothesis, when we do not really believe that things should be explained or decided on based on a hypothesis. Unless the entire ruleset of such a mathematical model can be discovered empirically, you will not see us put forward the type of disgusting hypothetical models you approximate in.

We don't need math - the diagram is 100% convincing without math.   But math works with it too.  So do simple words talking about how those photons travel along that straight path.

We can confirm this with simple experiments - that clouds are lit from below around sunset.

You simply cannot explain these things - and the reason why is obvious.   The world is round Tom...ROUND.

53

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: To make this place more civilised for Round Earthers

« on: November 19, 2017, 05:29:23 PM »

I could understand why you'd want to avoid having an RET forum section.

However, I think it would DRASTICALLY cut down on the number of repeats of the same argument if there was a place where the most common criticisms of FET could be "stickied" so that newbies who think they've just discovered a new disproof of FET could be directed towards.

So perhaps a "COMMON CRITICISMS" section?

I don't know who would decide which criticisms are worthy of being stickied...but I'm sure some mechanism could be devised.  This would actually help both sides of the debate.

54

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Conspiracy - why NASA?

« on: November 19, 2017, 05:22:16 PM »

Only three times ?  You’re just not trying !  Come on put some more effort in !

Seriously, is it 20% of the population trying to hide a flat earth from the other 80%, or 0.01% trying to wind up the other 99.99% ?

Good point!

55

Flat Earth Theory / Re: New here. How do you explain this?

« on: November 19, 2017, 05:21:45 PM »

How do you explain NASAs live feed from space which clearly shows curvature?

If I give you say 20 billion dollars (give or take a few hundred mill) do you think you could knock me up something that looks like a satelite is orbiting the earth in real time? Should be pretty doable...

http://spacenews.com/nasa-receives-more-than-19-6-billion-in-2017-omnibus-spending-bill/

And its what the Astronauts are "not" saying, that indicates where the truth lies.

 

It would be tough to have it track the weather in realtime.

I don't think the problem is as easy as you think.

56

Flat Earth Theory / Re: What are stars?

« on: November 19, 2017, 05:20:49 PM »

...before the technology existed and long before even  electricity had been discovered? Most of the technology you are talking about has only been delivered in living memory!

How do you know?? How do you know that what you and other people have been told, taught, conditioned with  throughout life is completely true and not lies? 

One of my earliest memories was when I was about three years old and my father sat down with a bunch of vacuum tubes and the guts from an old radio and over a couple of evenings put together a contraption that sat on our Kitchen table for about two weeks.   Every 96 minutes it emitted a beep-beep-beep sound for that got slowly louder, and then gradually quieter over about four minutes - then abruptly cut off.  He explained to me that this gizmo was picking up radio waves sent out by a machine that the Russians had sent into space that flew over the horizon, crossed the sky, disappeared over the horizon and then continued around the world for another 92 minutes before appearing again.  After a couple of weeks, his gadget went silent...and that was that.

It is VERY hard to imagine how that could have happened if the world was flat.

57

Flat Earth Community / Re: Anyone for a public discussion?

« on: November 19, 2017, 05:04:55 PM »

I never got beyond calculus at school, but still use basic trigonometry for navigation but 99% of the folks on this forum probably have no more knowledge of higher maths than I do. The problem is that FEs will see Tom's entertaining and amusing discussions with 3D and the maths will fly way above their heads. That won't though stop them gleefully seeing Tom refuting everything that 3D throws at him as proof that the world is flat, even though Tom is completely unable to come up with any arguments that are not baseless.

Nobody could possibly imagine that Tom refutes everything I say - a solid 60% of the "Disproof" threads I've started, he's never even contributed to.

In most cases, where he has no countervailing narrative - he just skips the thread and hopes that it sinks off the bottom of the forum list without too many people noticing.

Tom's "railroad track" thing is getting increasingly bizarre as he gets increasingly desperate to come up with an explanation.   We started with him (deliberately?) confusing what happens "in reality" and what happens in "a picture of reality"...then he started introducing some very weird vocabulary definitions between "location", "position" and "orientation" to throw more confusion into the situation.   Then, when I came up with a STUNNINGLY clear description of how perspective math applies - he said that diagrams cannot represent reality.   So I did the same thing with the path a photon literally takes - which HE STILL refuses to talk about - despite many times claiming that he would do so.   Then I came up with another disproof of sunsets that doesn't even involve eyes or cameras - and works solely by the heat you feel on your face.   That one was one of the "ignored" ones...because if you can show there are no FE sunsets WITHOUT requiring perspective - then he's really screwed.

In the latest round of desperation, he's started in on this crap about "continuous" versus "discrete" universe and mathematics.   Bouncing around between the two like an over-inflated beachball.   Sadly, the math works out the same no matter which model you choose...as I demonstrated with the Zeno paradox.

Tom is a desperate man...none of his arguments stand for very long - so he has to reach for more and more desperate niches in which to hide the glaring problem which is THE WORLD ISN'T FLAT.

But this is a guy who also claims that you can cure Ebola and AIDS using large doses of vitamin C and that Cancer can be cured with green peppers.   I imagine a good number of FE'ers flinching at those claims.

So we're not talking the smartest tool in the shed here.

58

Flat Earth Theory / Re: The Conspiracy - why NASA?

« on: November 19, 2017, 04:50:58 PM »

Just how many organisations are involved in the conspiracy ?
All the space agencies over the globe, both government and private
All the cartographic industry
Every pilot
Every mariner
Every astronomer
All of the satellite industry
A fair number of Google employees
All the industries that make and use GPS
The balloon satellite launchers (and nobody has every spotted a football field sized balloon being launched !)
All of the web sites that predict sun rise and sun set, eclipse of the sun and moon, alignment of the planets etc.
I’m sure that there are dozens more that I’ve missed, and not one single person has ever spilt the beans !  Not a single photo of the plane, nor of the edge.

You forgot me!

I've been accused of being a part of the conspiracy at least three times now.  :-)

* I've worked closely with NASA astronauts in the work I did for the Canadarm robot arm on the shuttle and the one on the ISS - also made a simulation of the view from the ISS cupola to demonstrate that there were important parts of the ISS structure that could not be adequately viewed from there.

* I use "GIS" (Geographic Information Systems) - which lean heavily on cartography.

* I've flown planes - both in reality and in flight simulators (which is what I do for a living right now).

* I'm a keen amateur astronomer.

* I haven't worked for Google - but I did do some contract work for them on "a project that shall not be named".

...I've also studied piracy at sea in the age of sail...very interesting to imagine how those crazy guys were pursuaded to keep their mouths shut about how navigation works south of the equator of a Flat Earth.

I believe you could make a good case for about 20% of the population of the world having to be a part of the conspiracy...at which point, you have to ask who they are really bothering to hide it from?

59

Flat Earth Theory / Re: How can the sun cast light in a circle when it covers half the earth?

« on: November 19, 2017, 04:43:05 PM »

Equally to the point, how can the sun cast a circle of light when it radiates in all directions ?

A circle of light?   Like this you mean?



(Midnight in Africa).

60

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Does the moon also cast a "flashlight" beam?

« on: November 19, 2017, 04:41:53 PM »

Where does it say that the sun's light is a "flashlight" beam?

Sorry - I should have made it clear that I was asking FE'ers who actually believe what all of the Wiki stuff says.

You still can't explain where the sun is when it's midnight over Africa and daylight in the USA and China:



...so I wouldn't expect a decent explanation from you.